Whales and Wales in Argentina

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Over the course of three days, and 25 hours on buses, we made our way from El Calafate to Puerto Madryn on Argentina's east coast. On the first night after leaving El Calafate we stayed in a place called Perito Moreno (nothing to do with the glacier, and famous in our eyes for topping the "Most Boring Town We've Been To In South America" list - or anywhere come to think of it). Not only is there nothing to do there, but we were there on a Sunday, when even the church closes. (Not really of course, but that's what it seemed like).

We amused ourselves by hitting the bottle early: 11am. The only place we could find open was a cafe, so we sat and nursed a couple of glasses of wine until they started serving lunch. Then in the afternoon we went to the other hot-spot of Perito Moreno entertainment, the petrol station, and made a couple of coffees last us until our 5pm bus whisked us away from this slow-motion town.


So, after arriving in Puerto Madryn we busied ourselves with organising transport to the "Peninsula Valdes", a little blob of land that sticks out of of the coastline like Barry Manilow's nose. That's the second reference to BM in our blog, I knew I shouldn't have put "Mandy" on the MP3 player. The waters around the peninsula are home to some fab animals like Southern Right Whales, Killer Whales, Magellan Penguins, Elephant Seals, Sea Lions, and Dolphins. On land there are rhea, armadillos, guanacos, and puma (allegedly - we didn't see any of course). So we hired a car from a chap who looked worryingly like Jeremy Clarkson and set off on our little adventure.


Probably the highlight was going on a whale-watching boat trip, to see Southern Right Whales. We were chuffed to see a few mums with their calves, and tried to get some good pics but it was difficult as they only pop up out of the water for a few short seconds. We came eyeball to eyeball with some Penguins, who were more than happy to ignore us and continue sunbathing on the cliff. Unfortunately no dolphins or killer whales though.

So that's the whales, what about the Wales we hear you cry. The area around Puerto Madryn was inhabited by Welsh settlers (the name Madryn sounds a bit Taff doesn't it?) and there are a number of Welsh tea shops around. The strange thing is that the sheep in this area are without doubt the biggest sheep we've seen in our lives. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not.


Bye for now,
Love from Jez and Bridge
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Photos

Southern Right Whale.
This is mum.

Pichi (a small armadillo)
Literally pooing itself after being chased and picked up by our bus driver after foolishly running across the road in front of a busload of gringos.

A solitary penguin.
He spent a good 15 minutes wandering around on his own. And we thought they were supposed to have a good sense of direction.